For all the talk about Ontario’s economy and jobs, voters may feel they don’t have much choice at the ballot box on Thursday, political scientists say

Ontario PC Leader Tim Hudak makes an announcement at a packaging plant about creating 40,000 jobs in Ontario with affordable energy during a campaign stop in Smithville, Ont., on Monday, May 12, 2014.
THE CANADIAN PRESS/Nathan Denette

For all the talk about Ontario’s economy and jobs, voters may feel they don’t have much choice at the ballot box on Thursday, political scientists say.

“There’s a hunger on the part of the electorate to have something on jobs but I’m not sure that voters believe any of the answers being given by political parties,” said Peter Graefe, associate professor in the department of political science at McMaster University.

“I look across the three party platforms and I don’t find a lot of stuff that would credibly create jobs or improve the quality of jobs that exist in Ontario. It’s a really shocking lack of attention to this issue of long-term decline.”

During the campaign, critics of all stripes have called out Progressive Conservative’s promise to create 1 million jobs for faulty calculations, the Liberals sluggish approach to tackling the $12.5 billion deficit, and the lack of concrete details in the NDP’s Job Creation Tax Credit.

In the waning days of the campaign this week, both the Ontario Provincial Police Association and Unifor separately came out against the Conservatives.

The police union said that a Hudak-led government would “launch a direct assault” on its workers’ collective agreements. Hudak has pledged to cut 100,000 jobs from the ranks of teachers and other government workers.

Both groups insisted they were not endorsing the Liberals, the NDP, or telling their members how to vote.

“We’re not telling our members who to vote for. We’re asking them to vote for someone other than Hudak and his party,” Unifor said in a release.

Unifor, Canada’s largest private sector union, includes workers at 35 media outlets, including the Toronto Star, Globe and Mail, and the Toronto Sun.

Jobs are an important issue for voters in Windsor and other parts of southwestern Ontario, said Cheryl Collier, associate professor of political science at the University of Windsor.

However, “Hudak’s Million Jobs plan doesn’t play the same way here because of his lack of consideration for what he calls corporate welfare, which would actually protect and save more jobs in this area,” Collier said.

Hudak first took aim at Chrysler’s request for public money to help its multi-billion dollar upgrade plans for plants in Windsor and Brampton in February.

Chrysler is the largest employer in Windsor, Collier added. “People are a bit concerned about what it means for the long-term health of the Chrysler plant.”

The minister, who said he was not trying to intervene in the June 12 vote, applauded the promised spending restraint in Quebec’s latest budget proposal and said that “acting responsibly” fiscal restraint would not be a drag on the economy.

“Hudak has said what people feel, that times are not going to get better that we have to do things to fix the problem, but the path he has proposed is so explicitly conservative, that...people may not be able to vote for it even if they agree with his assessment,” said Chris Cochrane, assistant professor in the department of political science at the University of Toronto’s Scarborough campus.

Voter turnout in advance polls had declined 6 per cent from the previous election, according to figures released this week.

“That might be good news for the Liberals,” said Penny Collenette, adjunct professor faculty of law at the University of Ottawa. “Normally when people are really angry and want change they will come out in droves to vote.”

With files from Star wire services

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